


Reveal

by Mirror_Verse, orphan_account



Series: Mirror-Verse [55]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirror_Verse/pseuds/Mirror_Verse, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second part to Plan D for Dumbass; Lucifer reveals the secret. It's not what they were expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reveal

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Plan D for Dumbass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/804604) by [Mirror_Verse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirror_Verse/pseuds/Mirror_Verse), [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account). 



"Holy shit!" Gabriel said as he almost grabbed a hot pan with his bare hands, scrambling to get everything done on an empty stomach. It was growling, actually, and the little tastes he allowed himself to have of the food he was making weren’t enough. He wanted to get this done, and now, more for the food than the big reveal. Although that was pretty tempting as well; but they way to Gabriel’s heart was indeed through his stomach. Sugar bought you a faster ticket. Secrets and gossip, however, were a close second, and this was both, so he thought that he might enjoy himself. If only Balthazar would just shut his trap for one minute.

It was pretty late for family dinner, but it was after work for Gabriel and the only time they could all get together. Lucifer was still sulking in his room and Gabriel was working on food in the kitchen while Balthazar tried to help. However, to him, “help" meant he was talking without lifting a hand, as far away from the actual food as he could be, while still in the kitchen, and that started to grate at Gabriel’s already thin patience. It was a surprise he wasn’t more tolerating than he was, given the family he had been stuck with. But he supposed that this kind of family tore away any tolerance you had, rather than built it up.

"A little help?" Gabriel turned to look at Balthazar lounging on the doorway, glaring at him slightly before he had to look at the myriad of pots and pans he had with an exasperated sigh.

"You’re the chef." He shifted his position against the doorway, studying his fingernails.

"I’m a pastry chef.

"Same thing, really."

"No, not really." Gabriel rolled his eyes but stopped arguing. He had too many things to be doing to argue with Balthazar, no matter how fun it could be. He wanted to placate Lucifer with all of his favorite foods to make sure that he was in a good enough mood to actually go through with telling them. He wasn’t entirely sure about the whole situation, it seemed kind of odd in general, not to mention at odds with Lucifer’s general personality. But if he was going to be getting some gossip and secrets out if it, he only hoped for the best and tried to go along with it.

"Can you go get him? Dinner is going to be ready soon." He didn’t look up from his stove while talking to his brother, unable to take his eyes off of everything. It was almost done, but if he overcooked anything, it would be the end of him. Perhaps not quite the end, but it would not be a pleasant experience. Not to mention, buying this much food was expensive, and it would be a waste if it wasn’t perfect.

"You want me to do what?" Balthazar asked, pushing himself straight up from the frame of the door, “You’re trying to get me killed. I knew it." He shook his head, leaning back against the door frame.

"Bribe him. I went to that restaurant he likes and got hummus, since I can’t make it worth shit and the chef there is from fucking Israel or something like that." Gabriel raised a hand, exasperated, “I would do it myself, but I have to watch all of this, and you aren’t capable of doing it for me, not even for a minute."

Balthazar rolled his eyes and peeled off of the doorway, strolling down the hall with his middle finger upturned at Gabriel, only retracting it when he went to knock at Lucifer’s door hesitantly. Lucifer yanked the door open with a scowl on his face, but Balthazar wasn’t scared of his brother, so he crossed his arms and shifted his weight to one side, “Gabriel says that dinner is almost ready. Told me to tell you that he got that hummus you like." He held his hands out in a shrug-like manner, to present that he was out of information.

Lucifer sighed and nodded, closing the door and reemerging with the lock and locking it behind himself. He ran a hand through his hair, although it already looked rather messy, and they set off down the hallway together to find Gabriel desperately taking all of the food off of the stove and put it aside for plates.

"Balthazar!" He said without looking over, “Get the plates out." Balthazar rolled his eyes but didn’t argue this time, he was too curious to let the insults on the tip of his tongue slip and ruin this dinner. He grabbed three plates, stacking them on top of one another to carry them to the table, but Lucifer opened the cabinet again, pulled a fourth out and set it on top of the stack and motioned for Balthazar to continue setting the table. He just stood there in the doorway between the kitchen and dining area, leaning on the wooden frame like Balthazar had earlier, watching his brothers scurry about.

He found it so fascinating, the lengths they were willing to go to just to pry into his life. It didn’t have to be their business if they didn’t want it to be, he was willing enough to keep his life a secret. In fact, he went to great lengths of his own to make sure that he had his private time. Here was Gabriel, cooking him more food than they would eat in a week, just because he wanted to know, and here was Lucifer, about ready to tell them.

It wasn’t like it was a bad thing, but he did just like his space. His brothers could be unnecessarily prying, and growing up with that, he had just learned to portion and save his time while he could. And parts of his life were to be kept to himself. But, honestly, he couldn’t keep this a secret for too long. It was a shame, though, because he had this image, even to his own family, and he had a feeling that it would be ruined by the ‘big reveal’.

They served the food buffet-style, because Gabriel was exhausted, and it was good enough, because they could choose their own portions (Lucifer hogged the hummus, but no one really cared.). The extra plate remained empty, the chair pushed all the way into the table, and Lucifer kept looking anxiously at the door. For the most part it was silent, Lucifer not ready without his guest to explain it, and neither Balthazar nor Gabriel wanting to push to much. Their brother could be unpredictable, and they didn’t want him to turn back now just because he got annoyed with them.

Halfway through the meal, about when Gabriel went back for thirds (usually his final plate, but he took twice as long as the rest of them to eat it, trying to leave room for dessert, of which he usually had two portions), someone knocked at the door. Lucifer leaped up to his feet before anyone else had the chance, walking across the room with a hurried pace, cracking the door open and standing in the space so that his brothers couldn’t see. Whomever he was speaking to, and Lucifer, were speaking in hushed tones, before they went silent and Gabriel and Balthazar heard the unmistakeable sounds of kissing.

They looked at each other in shock, not chewing while they exchanged glances with each other and the door, which their brother and his mystery lover. Gabriel swallowed his mouthful and licked his lips, staring at the doorway and trying to figure it out. It made sense, but…how? Who could stand their abrasive, recluse of a brother? He cringed slightly at the thought of the kind of person that was hiding behind that door, and then it was opening and he turned around quickly, suddenly afraid to see their guest.

Balthazar, on the other hand, had a seat that faced the door directly, and his eyes widened as he watched the two of them approached the table. Lucifer sat down in his seat from before, and a shorter woman with shoulder-length black hair sat down at the empty seat next to him. She gave them all a smile, staying quiet, except for a nudge at Lucifer’s arm and clearing her throat. He sighed, but introduced her, “This is Tessa, she’s my…girlfriend."

Balthazar and Gabriel were uncharacteristically silent, each of them trying to work out how this had happened. Lucifer pressed his lips into a line, giving them a glare and each of them stumbled slightly over their words trying to say hello to her.

"I’m Gabe," he said, winking at her and earning himself a warning glare from Lucifer. Balthazar introduced himself in a similar way, smirking at Lucifer and smiling over at Gabriel. It seemed that they had found their new weakness, their new way to tease him and they were excited. For all they fought, it was good to have a common victim.

Slowly, they continued eating, Lucifer sharing his plate with Tessa because neither of them wanted to get up and go into the kitchen. It was strangely tense in the room; Lucifer had expected a lot more joking and a lot less of the silent staring that was happening, given his brothers’ personalities. But they were eating as silently as possible with Gabriel’s annoying habit of eating with his mouth open and the sound of forks on plates, looking uneasily at each other. Lucifer had to wonder if they were just that weirded out by him having someone, or that someone would like him.

He’d known it was a bad idea. Somehow they managed to turn something that was good for him into something that was bad. They were always joking about how he was unable to have friends, how prickly and disagreeable he was, but they didn’t realize that it hurt, that it had always hurt but he couldn’t let them know. He couldn’t let anyone know, because he was Lucifer. He was named after Satan, for fuck’s sake. He had to be tough, had to be stern and mean and rude because that was what people expected from him.

Tessa had shown him that it wasn’t true, that he didn’t have to act that way. She had looked at him and smiled and brushed off his animosity and asked him what was wrong. She didn’t flinch at his name and she let him open up and be himself and show him that people could like him if he gave them a chance. The problem was that he didn’t know how, not even with his own siblings.

He knew it had hurt her a lot that he kept their relationship a secret from his family, but she knew how he was, she understood him, far more than any of his family ever had, and she let it go on until he was ready. And here they were; he wasn’t ready, not yet, but he had told them and things seemed to be going poorly.

"So…" Balthazar started, clasping his hands together at the edge of the table, “What do you do?" He looked over at Tessa with a smile, and Lucifer was surprised to see that it was Balthazar trying to play nice. He would have been surprised with either of them, really.

Tessa gave a reassuring pat to Lucifer’s hand and faced his brother, “I’m a coroner. I work across the street from Lucifer, actually."

Gabriel sighed, it all made much more sense. Leave it to Lucifer to date a coroner, someone that stared at and touched dead people all day. He shoved some more food into his mouth, talking around the food, “And what’s that like? Aren’t you just dying to do something else?" He smiled and held back from chuckling at his own, admittedly poor, joke.

She laughed, genuinely laughed, not just politely, “I enjoy it, actually. Not the dead people, but the sense that I’ve completed their story, that I’ve helped the family gain some kind of closure." She scooped up some of the hummus from the take out box Lucifer had hogged with the pita and took a rather large bite, getting some of it on her face. Lucifer looked over and snorted with laughter at her before wiping it off of her face, and she just stuck her tongue out at him. They might have kissed if they weren’t at the dinner table with Lucifer’s brothers, who were staring rather intently because it was Lucifer.

Gabriel smirked, “I bet your company’s pretty stiff, though."

She laughed lightly in return, nodding, “It is."

"The atmosphere is probably pretty suffocating, am I right?"

"A bit."

"Their jokes stink, don’t they?"

"Definitely."

He smiled, looking from her to Lucifer, and then leaning back in his chair, “No need to fret, my dear Luci, I approve." It earned him a glare from his brother and a small mouth-twitch, which was a smile from Lucifer. Gabriel wasn’t sure when the last time he had seen his brother smile was. Even though he was happy that Lucifer had finally left the single life, he was still going to use this as joke fodder, and he knew that Balthazar was as well.

"Too bad we all know that the only person whose opinion matters is mine." He said from across the table, empty plate pushed away from him. He wasn’t going to even take it to the kitchen, let alone clean it. That always fell to Gabriel to do, and it was a wonder anything got clean, or it would have been if Gabriel didn’t leave it for Lucifer to do.

Gabriel rolled his eyes at his brother, getting up to get dessert for himself. Balthazar called out to him from the dining room, “Get me some!" Gabriel just flipped him off from the doorway, “Get your own you lazy ass."

"You’re already up, so what’s the big deal in cutting another slice of pie?"

"Because then I would be doing something for you, and I don’t want that."

"You’re a huge douche, you know that, right?"

"Says you."

"Says everyone," Balthazar said, getting up to go into the kitchen and get himself some pie.

Tessa and Lucifer, exchanged a look. She tried to reassure him that it was fine, that she didn’t hate his family and they didn’t seem to hate her, at least not more than they hate each other.

"They seem surprised," she said, “but they don’t seem like they’re going to think of you any differently." She leaned forward and gave him a kiss, “Besides, I don’t know why you would want to be known as grumpy and irritable when you’re really so sweet." He just grumbled in return, and they straightened up as the other Novak brothers walked into the room again, still bickering. Gabriel placed a plate in front of each of them and Balthazar protested, “You wouldn’t get me some but you’ll get it for them?"

"Tessa is a guest, and this is a dinner for Lucifer."

"We only had to be nice to him until he told us," Balthazar said, sighing, “Now we can go back to normal."

Lucifer groaned and stood up, about to grab his plate when Tessa gave him a stern look. Narrowing his eyes a she looked at his brothers with a glare, he sat back down, crossing his arms over his chest before she smacked him and he stopped.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, “I guess we finally found someone who can tame Lucifer. Have you ever had practice as a snake charmer?" He smirked at his own joke, nudging Balthazar with his elbow to get him to laugh.

She smiled kindly at him, “No, I haven’t." She laughed a little bit, grabbing Lucifer’s hand under the table to calm him down where his brothers couldn’t see. But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t infer.

"It’s a shame, really," Gabriel continued, “Snake charming is so-"

"You’re holding hands, Lucifer, how cute." Balthazar sneered at him, chuckling under his breath.

"I suggest," Lucifer replied, “that you take a-" Tessa cleared her throat beside him and he halted in mid sentence, glaring more daggers at his brother and slumping back into this seat while Tessa brushed her thumb over the back of his hand.

Balthazar and Gabriel burst into peals of laughter, barely able to get a word in edgewise, “Oh," they said to each other, “He’s so," Gabriel said, “WHIPPED!" Balthazar burst out, on the edge of hysterical laughter. “What happened to our dick of an older brother?" Gabriel asked, pretending to wipe a tear from his eye as he finished laughing. Tessa was watching them sternly.

"He’s still here," Lucifer said lowly, glaring more and more. Tessa stood up abruptly, pushing her chair back into the table and motioned for Balthazar and Gabriel to follow her, which, although surprised, they did. She led them out front of the apartment, outside where it would be harder for Lucifer to hear.

It wasn’t that she didn’t think he should heat what she had to say, it was just that she knew that it wasn’t something he wanted her to do for him. But it was something that needed to be done, and sometimes you just had to do things that people didn’t like for their sake.

She closed the door slowly behind her, leaving a half-confused Lucifer inside. He had an inkling about what she was doing but he didn’t have the energy to stop her. “Listen," she said softly, looking up at both of them with her arms crossed. There was a fire in her eyes that they hadn’t seen all dinner. “You may like to tease him about being all big and bad and mean. That he won’t be able to have any friends. But did you ever stop to think that it might hurt him when you say those things?" She paused, trying to let it sink into their thick skulls. “He acts all big and tough because it’s what he had to do. It cost him friends, but his name might have done that as well. You guys need to grow up and support him rather than continuing to tear him down. No wonder he was so afraid to share anything with either of you."

They looked down, guilty, and she kept her stare on them. She hadn’t raised her voice, nor changed her tone all that much. But she was so stern, and serious about it that they couldn’t help but feel regret.

Wordlessly, she turned around and went to open the door, stepping back inside of the apartment and pulling Lucifer out of his seat, taking them to his room. “I haven’t seen it yet, but I really want to." she said with a sly smile, and he nodded and smiled back. Gabriel and Balthazar were left to stare and the mess and all of the dirty dishes that had been caused. Somehow they knew that Lucifer wasn’t going to be the one doing them this time, and they were just the smallest bit scared of Tessa. She had a kind of quiet fury that was terrifying, and she probably knew about 500 different ways to kill them.

No, they didn’t want to test her today, or any day. Perhaps this really was a good thing for Lucifer, and a good thing for their family. They rolled their eyes and started to gather up the plates and take them into the kitchen to be cleaned, still bickering among themselves. They had to have fun somehow.


End file.
